No laughing matter

The season just ended, and trout men have come up out of the river, shaking a summer's worth of twigs, flies and dead bats from our obnoxious headgear. We've trudged back across the fields, our minds elsewhere. We've found our cars, gone to the pub and sneaked back home in the dark to re-acclimatise.

We’ve stacked the rods, hung up the waders, emptied the beer bottles from our bags, filed our catch returns and stared malevolently at our forthcoming calendar.

Eventually, regrettably, our attention has been forced to focus on what you have been making of things while we were otherwise engaged.

You have not shaped up. Your concentration has obviously wandered and our world does not appear to have improved. On the contrary, we've got asymmetric political debate in Burma, another inquest into Princess Diana’s death, the first run on a British bank since the 19^th century and the emergence of the Clinton Cackle as the archetype political laugh.

Politicians don’t have a sense of humour on the whole. Whatever it is in their genes that makes them want to swan about being important and pretending to run things for us, also snips the laughter muscles and by-passes the humour circuitry.

It is their deeds rather than their wit that make us laugh. So, when someone tells you they’re all about substance, not spin, and then hires spin doctors to promote this calumny at every opportunity then you know you’re dealing with a politician – in this case Gordon Brown, ersatz prime minister of the UK.

The advertising campaign designed to make us like the man had a photo of him (dangerous for anyone with a face like a car wreck) and the words “Not Flash. Just Gordon”. At first I thought it was some crazed gin advertisement, and anyway, while I can remember who Flash Gordon is (or will be – he must have been set in the future), I can’t believe he means much to anyone younger than 40. After all, he was all the rage in 1934.

To avoid politicians and retain a sense of disproportion, chalkstream fly fishers must now switch attention to grayling, so it’s out with the box of Red Tags and Treacle Parkins, on with the Barbour jacket and away to the autumn river.